NYC's New Mayor & The Longest Shutdown Ever

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Hello, readers – happy Thursday! Today, we’ll be talking about the New York City mayoral election, the longest shutdown in history, a typhoon in the Philippines, Nvidia’s ambitions, more election results, SCOTUS vs Trump’s tariffs, and Alzheimer’s testing.

“She generally gave herself very good advice, (though she very seldom followed it).” ― Lewis Carroll

A New Dream In The City That Never Sleeps

It actually happened. On Tuesday night, Zohran Mamdani was officially elected mayor of New York City, realizing the dreams of some New Yorkers and the nightmares of others. Mamdani, the Democratic nominee in the mayoral race, secured 50.4% of the vote, while former New York governor Andrew Cuomo (who lost to Mamdani in the Democratic primary) won 41.6% of ballots cast. Republican Curtis Siwa got 7.1% of the vote, but at least he can go home and hang out with his six cats (he used to have 18).

“As Eugene Debs once said, I can see the dawn of a better day for humanity,” Mamdani declared in his victory speech. The 34 year-old Muslim democratic socialist won the hearts of New Yorkers (most of them, at least) by consistently pushing his affordability-focused platform. The new mayor plans to make buses free, set up a network of low-cost, city-owned grocery stores, and raise the Big Apple’s minimum wage to $30 by 2030; funding for those changes will come from tax hikes on corporations and millionaires.

Soon after Mamdani’s speech, the president chimed in on the election. “AND SO IT BEGINS!,” wrote Trump over TruthSocial. In an interview, he went on to state that Mamdani was apparently “very angry” with him, adding that the mayor is “off to a bad start.” We got a look at that start yesterday, when Mamdani unveiled his transition team. The all-female group includes former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, as well as New York political veterans Maria Torres-Springer, Grace Bonilla, and Melanie Hartzog, signaling the need for the new mayor to reconcile his ambitious agenda with the complicated reality of politics in the financial capital of the world.

The Shutdown Grinds On (And Also Grounds Flights)

We’re officially living through history (never a good thing). Yesterday, the U.S. government shutdown entered its 36th day, making it the longest shutdown in history. The previous record-length shutdown took place during Trump’s first term, when lawmakers clashed over the president’s plans to build a massive border wall. This time, the government is being held up over healthcare costs – Democrats are refusing to pass any spending bill that doesn’t extend Biden-era tax credits for healthcare plans purchased through Affordable Care Act (ACA) exchanges. Without those credits, analysts project that tens of millions of Americans will no longer be able to afford health insurance.

Besides breaking records, the shutdown is also causing cracks in day-to-day life. Yesterday, White House transportation secretary Sean Duffy announced that the federal government is planning to decrease airline traffic by 10% at 40 “high volume markets.” According to Duffy, those cuts will take effect on Friday unless the shutdown ends by then. The government hasn’t announced what, exactly, a “high volume market” means, but it’s likely that the cuts will hit New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and Dallas, among other major airports. International flights won’t be affected, though the cuts will take place across cargo, private, and passenger air traffic. The reductions, according to the White House, are pre-emptive measures aimed at reducing stress on air traffic controllers, who are working through the shutdown without pay. “As we slice the data more granularly, we are seeing pressures build in a way that we don’t feel, if we allow it to go unchecked, will allow us to continue to tell the public that we operate the safest airline system in the world,” said FAA administrator Bryan Bedford.

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Another Stormy Week

• Just a week after a record-breaking storm slammed into the Caribbean, another weather disaster is making headlines. Early this morning, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. declared a state of emergency in the wake of Typhoon Kalmaegi, which has left at least 114 people dead with more than 127 people still missing. The typhoon has fully passed over the Philippines at this point, but is now bearing down on Vietnam after regaining some of its destructive power.

• 2 million people in the Philippines were affected by the typhoon, and over 560,000 villagers were displaced. Many of those impacted live in Cebu province, which is still recovering from a 6.9 magnitude earthquake that occurred on September 30. Thousands of Cebu locals were living inside tents just before the typhoon hit, though officials were able to relocate them into sturdier emergency shelters in the nick of time. Roughly 350,000 in Vietnam's Gia Lai province are expected to be evacuated as the typhoon heads their way.

“Only More Nvidia Can Save Us” – The Nvidia Guy

• Yesterday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang warned that the U.S. will soon lose to China in the AI race. “As I have long said, China is nanoseconds behind America in AI,” Huang told the Financial Times. “It's vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide.” Beijing has been pushing out a growing percentage of AI-related scientific papers and patents over the past few years, and the number of top AI researchers working within its borders has also steadily increased.

• The solution to beating China, according to the billionaire, is for the global AI industry to run on Nvidia chips. The company wants to break into the Chinese market (which also wants access to Nvidia chips), but U.S. President Donald Trump stated on Sunday that Nvidia’s top-of-the-line Blackwell chips should be reserved for U.S. companies only. Beijing, too, is pressuring Nvidia by trying to keep its chips out of the hands of Chinese developers – the government wants domestic chipmakers such as Huawei to power its AI movement instead. 

• “We want America to win this AI race. No doubt about that,” Huang said at an Nvidia developers' conference last month. “We want the world to be built on American tech stack. Absolutely the case. But we also need to be in China to win their developers. A policy that causes America to lose half of the world's AI developers is not beneficial in the long term, it hurts us more.”

More Mixed Nuts

• Man gropes Mexican president as she speaks to citizens on the streets (Guardian)

• Mary was not co-redeemer, Vatican says amid spread of cult of the Madonna (Guardian)

• Inside Gaza, BBC sees total devastation after two years of war (BBC) 

• How Venezuela’s Military Might Respond to U.S. Attacks (NYT, $)

• Japan deploys the military to counter surge in bear attacks (AP)

• Opium farming in Afghanistan shrank by a fifth in 2025, UN survey finds (Reuters)

Wait, There Were Other Elections This Week?

• New York City’s mayoral election may have stolen the headlines on Wednesday, but multiple other elections yielded major results as well. In California, a wide majority of voters approved Proposition 50, which will redraw voting districts across the state. If everything goes to the Democrats’ plans, the new districts will make it easier for left-leaning candidates to win elections for five Republican-held House seats – that would counteract similar redistricting measures in Texas aimed at netting the GOP 5 more House seats.

• Meanwhile, Democratic candidates Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger also secured the governorships of New Jersey and Virginia. The pair of moderates are nowhere close to Zohran Mamdani on the political spectrum, though they also focused on cost of living issues in their campaigns. “I thought New Jersey would do a little bit better than that,” Trump said after the elections were called. Winsome Earle-Sears, the GOP candidate for Virginia’s governorship, “didn't really have my support, my big support,” he added. “My endorsement means a lot to me.”

Will Trump’s Tariffs Get Their Justice?

• Yesterday, Supreme Court justices began hearing arguments on the legality of Trump’s tariff policy. Over the first year of his term, the president has been relying on an emergency law in order to unilaterally impose tariffs on imports from other countries despite the fact that the Constitution clearly states that Congress alone has the power to levy tariffs. 

• Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, appeared ready to challenge the White House’s use of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. According to administration lawyers, the act gives the president the power to “regulate … importation” during emergencies. 

• “Can you point to any other place in the code – or any other time in history – where that phrase, together, ‘regulate importation’ has been used to confer tariff imposing authority?,” Barrett asked the White House’s attorney. “Correct me on this if I’m not right about it,” Roberts asked at another point, but the justification is being used for “a power to impose tariffs on any product, from any country, in any amount, for any length of time.” If those two justices decide to rule against Trump for the first time this term, they’ll have a 5-4 majority striking down his tariff powers (assuming all three liberal justices rule against Trump).

More Nuts In America

• 12 dead after engine fell off UPS plane that crashed and exploded in Kentucky (AP)

• Rubio, Hegseth brief lawmakers on boat strikes as frustration grows on Capitol Hill (NPR)

• Dick Cheney helped design the ‘war on terror.’ It opened a Pandora’s box that still hasn’t been closed (CNN)

• Sandwich thrown by protester 'exploded' and left mustard stain on border agent, court hears (BBC)

• Mamdani Won. South Florida Expects a Real Estate Bump. (NYT, $)

• He tried to come back from exile. Now Andrew Cuomo’s career is over for good. (Politico)

Alzheimer’s Progress Is A Slow Process

• Blood tests for Alzheimer’s disease have hit the market. Reading that sentence, you probably already know that you can’t just waltz up to a Walgreens, order a test, and go home knowing that you’re Alzheimer’s-free. But here’s how they work in case you were curious.

• The test, named Elecsys pTau181 and produced by Roche Pharmaceuticals, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last month. It tests for traces of an altered form of tau proteins in patients’ blood – tau and amyloid proteins are associated with certain forms of dementia, where they can become malformed and accumulate in people’s brains (this is called amyloidosis). According to Roche, a negative result from the test is 97.9% accurate, allowing patients to skip out on more invasive tests.

• The catch here is that the tests don’t actually screen for protein buildups in patients’ brains – tau proteins in the blood just suggest that subjects might be dealing with amyloidosis. In order to confirm that, more intensive tests must be performed, including cerebrospinal fluid analysis by lumbar puncture. Even if early-stage Alzheimer’s disease can be confirmed by testing, though, recently-approved treatments for the condition can only slow the progress of symptoms – they also come with a whole raft of side effects.

More Loose Nuts

• Epic and Google agree to settle their lawsuit and change Android’s fate globally (Verge)

• Mistake-filled legal briefs show the limits of relying on AI tools at work (AP)

• This machine could keep a baby alive outside the womb. How will the world decide to use it? (Guardian)

• Of Course Tom Brady Cloned His Dog (The Cut)

• The AI Data Center Boom Is Warping the US Economy (Wired, $)

• The Company Quietly Funneling Paywalled Articles to AI Developers (Atlantic, $) 

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